JJ: I was born in Louisville, Kentucky, and raised in New Albany, Indiana. I live in New Albany now, though I’ve lived in Muncie, Indiana, for a few months and Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, for two years.

NS: How does your magazine fit into the world of publishing today?

JJ: decomP is yet another outlet for creative work, but unlike several journals, we publish a range of material from the traditional to the experimental.

NS: Does it do anything that no one else is doing?

JJ: Yes and no. I say yes because no other magazine is publishing what we publish because we require writers to submit new work. The only reason I say no is because many other publications are using the same means–text, pictures, audio, video–to deliver their content. We have limitations in this regard.

NS: How do you feel about literary journals in general: simply a necessary means to an end, or something more worthwhile than even anthologies these days?

JJ: It may surprise you, but literary journals are actually my favorite things to read. I enjoy reading different authors of different genres all in one place. They also help me discover writers I probably wouldn’t have read otherwise. As for being more worthwhile than anthologies, there are a lot of variables that prevent me from giving a clearcut answer. I will say, however, that I prefer journals/anthologies to not have theme issues.

NS: What kind of stuff does your journal publish?

JJ: Great stuff! We publish flash prose and short prose. The prose can be traditional, fabulist, experimental, etc. Our poetry is free verse and form. The art is usually a painting but sometimes a photograph. I think we publish compelling work no matter its classification.

NS: Please give us the submission guidelines. Include if you accept online submissions, if you require a reading fee, and if there is a reading period.

JJ: I recommend checking out our guidelines at http://www.decompmagazine.com/submit.htm. But, to answer your specifics, we accept online submissions via Submishmash. There are no reading fees. There’s no reading period; we’re open year-round.

NS: Do you think literary journals are endangered?

JJ: Not at all. It seems every time I check Duotrope there are new journals popping up.

NS: Is becoming “online only” something to be worried about?

JJ: I don’t think so. Rather than pit online and print against each other, why not combine them? After all, you can do things with print that you can’t do online and vice versa. I often think of what Lee K. Abbott said in Dzanc’s Best of the Web 2009: “good writing is good writing, no matter where we find it.”

NS: Will only the fittest survive, and could this be a good thing?

JJ: Yes. I believe a lot of journals don’t make it because people start them without knowing just how much time and effort they’ll require. Maintaining a journal–online, print, or both–is hard work. Plus, you won’t make much of a profit, if any. In fact, I’d say journals, on average, lose money.

NS: What about book-publishing?

JJ: I’d say the same thing: people will continue to publish work if they believe in it, even if they lose money doing so.

NS: Had you heard of Sonora Review before this?

JJ: Yes. I know several writers who’ve had work in Sonora Review. Some of these writers have also had work in decomP.